The success of the Groupon model of the US group-buying website made group-buying websites popular in China overnight. Group buying websites are springing up one after another. It seems that at this juncture, if you do not do group buying on the Internet, you will fall behind. Group buying websites, large and small, are basically the same, with the same model, but no matter whether it is a success or a failure, no matter what the prospects are, there are still a lot of promoters behind them scrambling to be the first and eager to follow suit. It’s not just the e-commerce industry and individual webmaster circles that are following the group buying trend. Major portals and Internet giants are not willing to be outdone. Just like the previous Weibo war, they seem to be unwilling to settle. Today alone, it was reported that Sina's group buying platform will be launched on the 12th and will be promoted through Weibo, and that QQ Mall will launch the first product of the group buying channel and pre-order 9 items within a few hours. It can be expected that there will still be large portals and Internet giants joining the group buying army, and the group buying war will escalate again.
We can also see a phenomenon from this, which is that any project on the domestic Internet that becomes popular will be followed by many websites and companies, large and small, to imitate and follow suit. There are successes and failures. There are few successes and many failures, but we still keep going. Although imitation is the basis of innovation, imitating first and then innovating is the path taken by many successful websites and companies. However, judging from the current development of domestic group buying websites, there is more imitation than innovation. The lack of innovation is mainly reflected in the fact that many current domestic Internet concepts and product ideas originate from foreign countries. Social networking sites in China imitate Facebook, Weibo imitates Twitter, and the idea of chat software comes from icq. Although imitations are also successful, this is only because of the blankness of the domestic market. When the market becomes saturated, it will be difficult for new imitators to have The way out, group buying is an example. There are already many small group buying websites that are not operating well and have many problems. In fact, the domestic Internet has not lacked innovation since its initial development. Although QQ imitated foreign chat software, it developed and expanded it on the basis of imitation, adding its own innovative ideas, and achieved hundreds of millions of users today. The QQ of the group makes the image of the little penguin deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. As for Baidu, as the search engine with the largest domestic market share, its ideas and even page style come from Google, which has the largest market share in the world. However, it has an extremely clear understanding of the innate advantages of the Chinese market, allowing it to develop many of its own based on its local advantages. Original and fresh products, such as the classic Tieba, are examples of innovation amid imitation. To a certain extent, it also shows that imitation is not an easy thing. It can effectively avoid risks and easily launch mature products. The cost is reduced to a certain extent in the early stage of operation. In the Chinese Internet where competition is fierce and there are many company websites , imitation has naturally become the mainstream idea.
The sage Confucius once said, "Choose what is good and follow it; choose what is bad and change it." Lu Xun also proposed the "use doctrine" in an article, which shows that imitation has merit. The domestic Internet developed late and was immature in its early stages. Many website companies had no choice but to imitate if they wanted to survive. There are also many websites and companies that have laid the foundation for innovation through imitation. However, after ten years of development of the Internet, the domestic market is highly mature, and the number of Internet users exceeds 400 million. Today, the market has both huge opportunities and unlimited risks. If you want to stand out among many similar companies in the same industry, you can only rely on Innovation, this is the main reason why today, although the Internet is springing up in China, it is not blooming like a hundred flowers. There are more people imitating than innovating, and there are too many similarities. Users are confused about the choice and will also make you lose your way. Especially for industries like group buying, which are vertically regional and have a vast market, but the industry is prone to quantitative similarities. Without innovation, they will only be drowned in a sea of numerous similar websites.
The current lack of domestic Internet innovation is mainly reflected in two major groups. One is small and medium-sized personal webmaster Internet entrepreneurs, and the other is monopolistic Internet giants. In the former, the number of people has increased sharply due to the lowering of the threshold for Internet entrepreneurship and website building. However, fierce competition on the Internet, coupled with the influence of external factors such as policies, have resulted in a poor living environment for small and medium-sized forces. Many innovative ideas have been stifled because there is no support from financial and technical policies. It’s not that they don’t want to innovate, but they are unable to innovate. This creates a vicious circle, with only a handful of individual webmasters and entrepreneurs standing out. Therefore, once a certain type of website or product becomes popular on the Internet, they will blindly follow the trend. There may be benefits in the short term, but it is definitely not a long-term solution. A number of group buying websites have been launched, and perhaps in the near future, a number of group buying websites will also close down. The latter often monopolizes the market with the help of its huge resource advantages and user base. The fierce competition among them has also caused these giants to be reluctant to spend too much time on complete innovation. Often when one company makes a certain type of website or product, other giants will not be outdone and rush to launch it. To ensure that they do not lose to each other in competition. They have a foundation and advantages, and may not fall easily. Even if they fall, they can turn to other products to imitate, modify, slightly innovate, and launch them again. For example, the Weibo war is still fierce. Although there are innovations, everyone basically wants to seize this field. It may be difficult for small and medium-sized webmasters to operate, but the monopoly giants can still hold their ground. In the end, it may be only the users who cry.
Imitation is the premise and foundation of innovation, while innovation is the inheritance and development of imitation. China's Internet still encourages imitation, but there are limits to imitation. If it is just imitation that is eager for quick success, without innovating on this basis, not doing things that are useful to users, and not contributing to the development of the industry, then imitation will often end in a dead end. (Text/Yangyang)